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Good Night, Darling Prince 😿
Oct. 15th, 2022 12:55 am(TL;DR for those who want just the meat and none of the heart-vomit: Beloved kitty gone from cancer and I'm not ok.)
___
We put my dear beloved kitty DP down today. He was 16.
We realized he was in trouble when he abruptly stopped eating and started being cuddly with the entire house.
After panicked searching, my partner found a vet that would do the job.
He declined fast. The tumor they found was like a stone. There was no chance. Stomach cancer in a senior age cat is a death sentence. They can't recover.
It's far kinder to let him go than to take extraordinary measures. ...we couldn't have done that either way, because we're literally poor.
We gave him one last night of cuddles before we sent him across the bridge to wait for me.
We tried to find a ride for two hours.
I actually dehydrated myself crying and the only reason I'm not right now is because I literally can't right now. At 8:45, at my altar because I have a broken ankle and could not make the heroic trek on foot to the vet's office, but with a paw on my fiance's hand and my voice as one last message from me (via Telegram), he finally stopped trying to fight the drugs, dozed off...and slipped off to wait for me in the After.
...I hope I didn't frighten the neighbors with the primal scream that I only barely managed to bite back. Though the Anguished Grief-Striken Negro Wailing™️ may have caused some concern.
I have a hard enough time if the dead body was empty when I got there. I freak out. I get sick. I—Well, I'd call it spiraling into apocalyptic despair, but "spiraling" implies at least a little mercy, a little reprieve before I hit the bottom. No, it's more like the ground teleports to meet me. Pretty much everyone who knows me and cares half a whit about me knows about this form of thanatophobia of mine ([i]thanatophobia[/i] is the fear of death). But I so wanted to be there for my darling boy as he crossed over.
My fiance literally took five minutes expressing his absolute prayers-answered gratitude that I couldn't be there.
He said that seeing this would have broken me beyond repair. The harsh lights, the antiseptic air...the quiet room that made it clear that this was a huge moment...the second life left his frail, still-plushie-soft body—
I can feel the scream rising again in my chest, like mercury in an old thermometer that's so old its glass has begun to craze and frost over, as I try to explain the absolute hollow-point bullet I dodged to you.
He said that between everything involved, and knowing what he has learned about me, he already knew that this was a mercy that he had to grant. He'd been cagey about getting me out there, and knew what had to be done.
Our ride text-attempts didn't get responses until 9:30 AM.
According to the vet, it was a good thing we got there when we did...because he wouldn't have made it that long.
My dear darling boy would have died in my arms, wrapped in the hot-pink fleece blanket I'd been laying on the past few weeks.
...I know for an absolute fact that my fiance was right.
I have suffered many, many things in my life. I was shot in the knee with my cousin's bb gun at 5 and whipped with a switch (flexy bendy stick) for "lying." My mother's death at 9, from breast cancer, during BCA month—so abbreviated because my keyboard insists on planting a godsdamned pink ribbon emoji after that demon disease's name. My grandfather's death, where I held it together just long enough to break down HARD in the limo...where my dumbass cousins cracked up laughing at my grief, mocking the sound that had ripped its way out of me after five days of zero tears and probably starting my path to a flattened affect. 9/11. Rape and PTSD. Illegal eviction. Bipolar crashes so hard that I actively wanted to die immediately.
None of them,
not a one,
hurt like this.
I wouldn't have cracked.
I would have simply disintegrated. I know there wouldn't have been any coming back from losing my friend and familiar if I'd had to actually watch the spark leave his beautiful but cataractian eyes.
(Well fuck there go the tears. Guess I'm hydrated again.)
The poor dear was only home from his boarder's for 13 hours.
He spent his last 13 hours with me. With us.
He was only here 13 hours but it felt like we experienced 13 years of love from him.
He was only here 13 hours, but the place feels so damned empty without his old-man meow.
... as weird as it is to say, I'm not sure I would trade those 13 hours for another day with him. I know he was hurting. He was weak, tired, physically unable to process input anymore. When we nabbed him, while he was in the crate, he frantically tried to reach me, even going as far as getting up on his wobbly spindly legs and charging the carrier door. But he melted into my body when I swaddled and carried him later, snuggling into my chest and neck like old times, and I could feel him: he seemed to be saying, "I've gotten everything I needed. Now I can rest." And when I realized that, I broke. But...
...in that short time, I felt so much love. From my fiance, who immediately fell in love with the boy; and from the boy himself, just happy to feel, smell, and hear me for just a little longer.
In that short time, love came home.
Now, I'm in the dark. I've lost the moon.
And my grief is the night sky, heavy with rain clouds.
And tomorrow I am home alone.
I'd be lying if I said I was positive I'll be OK when I wake up. But anything is better than what bearing witness would have done to me. I know the only reason I might have survived that would have been my brain calling an emergency shutdown and rendering me catatonic.
...please. if you can...candles, prayers, affirmations. Anything.
I want to get through this. I'm just not sure I can.
___
We put my dear beloved kitty DP down today. He was 16.
We realized he was in trouble when he abruptly stopped eating and started being cuddly with the entire house.
After panicked searching, my partner found a vet that would do the job.
He declined fast. The tumor they found was like a stone. There was no chance. Stomach cancer in a senior age cat is a death sentence. They can't recover.
It's far kinder to let him go than to take extraordinary measures. ...we couldn't have done that either way, because we're literally poor.
We gave him one last night of cuddles before we sent him across the bridge to wait for me.
We tried to find a ride for two hours.
I actually dehydrated myself crying and the only reason I'm not right now is because I literally can't right now. At 8:45, at my altar because I have a broken ankle and could not make the heroic trek on foot to the vet's office, but with a paw on my fiance's hand and my voice as one last message from me (via Telegram), he finally stopped trying to fight the drugs, dozed off...and slipped off to wait for me in the After.
...I hope I didn't frighten the neighbors with the primal scream that I only barely managed to bite back. Though the Anguished Grief-Striken Negro Wailing™️ may have caused some concern.
I have a hard enough time if the dead body was empty when I got there. I freak out. I get sick. I—Well, I'd call it spiraling into apocalyptic despair, but "spiraling" implies at least a little mercy, a little reprieve before I hit the bottom. No, it's more like the ground teleports to meet me. Pretty much everyone who knows me and cares half a whit about me knows about this form of thanatophobia of mine ([i]thanatophobia[/i] is the fear of death). But I so wanted to be there for my darling boy as he crossed over.
My fiance literally took five minutes expressing his absolute prayers-answered gratitude that I couldn't be there.
He said that seeing this would have broken me beyond repair. The harsh lights, the antiseptic air...the quiet room that made it clear that this was a huge moment...the second life left his frail, still-plushie-soft body—
I can feel the scream rising again in my chest, like mercury in an old thermometer that's so old its glass has begun to craze and frost over, as I try to explain the absolute hollow-point bullet I dodged to you.
He said that between everything involved, and knowing what he has learned about me, he already knew that this was a mercy that he had to grant. He'd been cagey about getting me out there, and knew what had to be done.
Our ride text-attempts didn't get responses until 9:30 AM.
According to the vet, it was a good thing we got there when we did...because he wouldn't have made it that long.
My dear darling boy would have died in my arms, wrapped in the hot-pink fleece blanket I'd been laying on the past few weeks.
...I know for an absolute fact that my fiance was right.
I have suffered many, many things in my life. I was shot in the knee with my cousin's bb gun at 5 and whipped with a switch (flexy bendy stick) for "lying." My mother's death at 9, from breast cancer, during BCA month—so abbreviated because my keyboard insists on planting a godsdamned pink ribbon emoji after that demon disease's name. My grandfather's death, where I held it together just long enough to break down HARD in the limo...where my dumbass cousins cracked up laughing at my grief, mocking the sound that had ripped its way out of me after five days of zero tears and probably starting my path to a flattened affect. 9/11. Rape and PTSD. Illegal eviction. Bipolar crashes so hard that I actively wanted to die immediately.
None of them,
not a one,
hurt like this.
I wouldn't have cracked.
I would have simply disintegrated. I know there wouldn't have been any coming back from losing my friend and familiar if I'd had to actually watch the spark leave his beautiful but cataractian eyes.
(Well fuck there go the tears. Guess I'm hydrated again.)
The poor dear was only home from his boarder's for 13 hours.
He spent his last 13 hours with me. With us.
He was only here 13 hours but it felt like we experienced 13 years of love from him.
He was only here 13 hours, but the place feels so damned empty without his old-man meow.
... as weird as it is to say, I'm not sure I would trade those 13 hours for another day with him. I know he was hurting. He was weak, tired, physically unable to process input anymore. When we nabbed him, while he was in the crate, he frantically tried to reach me, even going as far as getting up on his wobbly spindly legs and charging the carrier door. But he melted into my body when I swaddled and carried him later, snuggling into my chest and neck like old times, and I could feel him: he seemed to be saying, "I've gotten everything I needed. Now I can rest." And when I realized that, I broke. But...
...in that short time, I felt so much love. From my fiance, who immediately fell in love with the boy; and from the boy himself, just happy to feel, smell, and hear me for just a little longer.
In that short time, love came home.
Now, I'm in the dark. I've lost the moon.
And my grief is the night sky, heavy with rain clouds.
And tomorrow I am home alone.
I'd be lying if I said I was positive I'll be OK when I wake up. But anything is better than what bearing witness would have done to me. I know the only reason I might have survived that would have been my brain calling an emergency shutdown and rendering me catatonic.
...please. if you can...candles, prayers, affirmations. Anything.
I want to get through this. I'm just not sure I can.
